


Fencing master

by zmeischa



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Трудно быть богом - Стругацкие|Hard to be a god - A. & B. Strugatsky
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-21 00:38:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1531640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zmeischa/pseuds/zmeischa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The secret life of Syrio Forel</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fencing master

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who've never read "Hard to be a God" (meaning, for all the non-Russian-speaking readers, I guess) - this fic can be read without any knowledge of the other canon, still there are a few things you should know. Progressors are people of an advanced space-faring civilization (Earth of the XXII century, in this case) who facilitate progress of less advanced civilizations. "Alyosha" is a diminutive of "Alexey".'Midas' is a machine that can make gold coins from any rubbish. "Casparamide" is a drug that helps you to stay sober.   
> Posting this is an experiment of sorts. This fic received a lot of praise from Russian fandom, i.e. from people to whom "Hard to be a God" has been one of the formative books. I'm dying to see the reaction of people with different background.
> 
> Many thanks to darkling for beta-reading!

A man in a wide cloak was walking along the Street of Sisters at night. He was elderly and bald, but his walk was as springy as any youth’s, his hand was lying on the hilt of his small sword, so the night-robbers, upon seeing him, would exchange glances and silently decide to wait for another victim. At the foot of Vysenia’s Hill, next to the Guildhall of the Alchemists, he stopped – the building of black marble seemed to fascinate him. However he didn’t knock at the gates but went toward the Street of Steel instead. 

The Baelor’s Sept, its crystal towers glowing mysteriously in moonlight, attracted his attention as well. He stopped again and muttered something in a foreign singsong. Then he looked around hastily, knocked on his bald head with the knuckle of his forefinger and went up Vysenia’s Hill. 

At the Street of Steel he found an impressive building guarded by two stone knights. The carved doors of ebony and weirwood were locked. The man squinted, admiring the intricate pattern, then pressed some imperceptible bump. A small wicket appeared in the right corner, and the man entered inside. 

A fire was burning at the smithy. The smith was weighing some bright powder at the candle-light. He heard the steps and lifted his head. 

“Good night to you, Tobho Mott!” the night guest greeted him. “I beg your pardon for disturbing you so late, but my need is urgent”. 

“Kyrill Ivanovich, stop that nonsense,” grumbled the smith. 

“Why, Alyosha, you’re the one who always demands I keep secrecy,” Kyrill Ivanovich answered amiably. “Why don’t you pour me some tea?”

“Don’t own any. Wouldn’t advise you either. You, an educated man, should realize, I hope…”

“I do hope you didn’t call me to this late-night meeting to lecture me. Well, if there’s no tea, let’s talk about our sad business”. 

The smith – actually, Alexey Golovin, the head of progressors’ cell on Westeros – took a stool and sat on it. 

“Joke all you can, our business is sad indeed. Since Jon Arryn was poisoned, we’re in for some big trouble”, he began.

“So he _was_ poisoned”.

“It appears so. There was no autopsy, of course, but the whole business was so shady that everything is clear. I had a sort of an agent there, one Hugh of the Vale, I don’t know if he was bought or simply scared but now when he sees me he pretends we’re strangers. Well, that death was bad all by itself – Arryn was smart, he was cautious, we’ve put into practice some useful reforms through him, and, after all, he had assured peace. But what’s worse, he was poisoned for some reason, wasn’t he? And which exactly? No answer. And, to make things absolutely excellent, Tywin Lannister will not be the Hand.”

“So you did want Tywin? But he is, how do I put it mildly…”

“A son of a bitch, yes. But he has brains and he wants peace. And, thanks to his sweet daughter’s antics, I have him right here”. Alexey opened his right palm and showed the exact place where he had Tywin Lannister. “I could have dealed with him. But instead the king went North and made Lord Eddard Stark his Hand”. 

“Stark,” Kyrill Ivanovich muttered. “Stark, Stark, Stark. The Warden of the North, if I remember correctly. But I believe that after the Greyjoy Rebellion he wasn’t...”

“Exactly. The king’s Hand is murdered, and the king is suddenly up and running to the man who’d spent the last nine years in his god-forsaken corner. It appears that our Robert Baratheon felt his iron chair was getting hotter under his royal arse, and the only man he could trust now was Eddard Stark”. 

Kyrill Ivanovich scratched his ear. 

“Nice. And what shall we do in the improbable case the king, say, gets poisoned?”

Alexey switched to Common Tongue and elaborated, in a very flowery language, on their actions in such an interesting case. Kyrill Ivanovich hemmed with pleasure: he was a folklorist and loved colorful figures of speech. 

His heart unburdened, Alexey went on:

“And that, if you can imagine, is just the beginning of the story. Stark’s elder daughter is betrothed to Prince Joffrey.”

“Poor girl! Alyosha, we must prevent it!”

“How?” Golovin asked angrily. “Take her to Sothoros by submarine? Is our purpose here to rescue maidens of noble birth? You’d better consider that the King threw the balance of power to hell. Eddard Stark is the Hand, his daughter is the future queen, and where does it leave Tywin Lannister? And does he want to be left there?” 

Kyrill Ivanovich heaved a mournful sigh. With all his philological passion he hated the local politics, for being so cruel, so dumb and moronically serious. Progressorship, in his eyes, was somewhat akin to breeding poisonous spiders: good for science but creepy to watch. 

He liked Westeros in spite of its savage mores and neglect of elementary hygiene. Locusts and dogs here were not considered food, people were not burned alive (and hadn’t been for the last fifteen years) and, above all, it was warm. Born in Novosibirsk, Kyrill Ivanovich hated winter, couldn’t ski to save his life and before going to Martina (that was the planet’s name on celestial maps) used to spend all his vacations at the seaside. 

He liked the people of the continent as well. They were mostly illiterate, thievish, borrowed money without any intent of repaying the debt, ate with their hands and drank an awful lot. Once armed, they began to behave as if their own life was worth a penny and any other’s life was cheaper than groat. But they still had some simple-hearted charm and, as illiterate people do, they stored the treasures of folklore in their heads. 

However, his sympathy stopped at politicians. They remembered no lore, folk or otherwise, they priced other people’s lives cheaper than dirt, their morals were as shaky as anybody’s but their cynicism was appalling. The king’s sexual life would make a baboon blush, the queen had two of her husband’s illegitimate children poisoned, the upper crust were thieves of unimaginable scale. Compared to the Red Keep the Flee End, its gutters flowing with fecal matter, seemed clean and pleasant, especially with nose-filters on. 

“You’ve denied me permission to go to the North for five years,” he said in a quarrelsome tone, “and now you are complaining”. 

“It’s cold there”, Golovin reminded him sardonically, “and it snows”. 

Kyrill Ivanovich’s hatred of winter was common knowledge. 

“Who cares about your snow, they have the richest stratum of folklore there, from the times of the Children of the Forest! They are still praying to the trees there! And they say that behind the Wall…”

“Behind the Wall,” Golovin repeated in a strange voice. “Exactly. That’s something I wanted to tell you all along. You see, some time ago our man in the Valley managed to slip a “bug” to a lordling who was going to join the Night’s Watch. One Waymar Royce if the name means anything to you. The camera in the hilt of the sword charges from the body warmth and transmits straight to the satellite. The folks up there gathered some great data, and then Royce died and his camera and self-destroyed after the last transmission.”

“What was in it?”

“No idea. But the whole planet’s danger level is two points higher now. And I’m sorry to say it, Kyrill Ivanovich, but it means that all the civilians must be evacuated. In a week you’ll board a boat, then you’ll be taken by submarine, spend some time on the Sothoros base and then all of you will go home”. 

Kyrill Ivanovich made a row. He shouted that he wouldn’t go. That he wasn’t there to pick flowers, he had a scientific mission. That recalling people because of some faulty optics was highly irresponsible. That he was a professional fencer and was able to take care of himself. Golovin, his arms folded on his chest, listened without saying a word. 

At last Kyrill Ivanovich ran dry. 

“All right, tell me what you want,” he said angrily. “You filled my head with all that Eddard Stark nonsense for a reason, didn’t you?” 

“I did,” Alexey agreed calmly. “Kyrill Ivanovich, I desperately need a man in the Red Keep. You’re complaining that I didn’t let you to go to the North – I let no one there, in that place everybody knows everybody else, any newcomer is visible like a boil on a… forehead, even bards are scarce”. 

“Why haven’t I ever tried to disguise myself as a bard, by the way?” 

“For goodness sake, you have neither voice nor ear for music, you told me so yourself”. 

“The bards in these lands have neither as well. Take Malygin, for instance, he is some singer”. 

Oleg Malygin was well-known as Tom of Sevenstreams, author and singer of lyric ballads and bawdy songs. 

“No,” Golovin refused, “I won’t take Malygin, I need him in the Riverlands. And what use is a bard in the Red Keep? If he were a jester… You might disguise yourself as a jester, if you wish, people talk in front of jesters”. 

Kyrill Ivanovich scratched his head. 

“I’m sorry, are you suggesting I become a spy in earnest?” 

Alexey reached somewhere under the table and poured himself a mug of wine. 

“Alcoholism,” he said in a didactic tone, “is the occupational disease of intelligence men. Kyrill Ivanovich, my dear, if you really regard this as “spying”, why don’t you pack your things in the morrow and go to Sothoros quietly? I am in desperate need of an agent in the Red Keep, and your legend is air-tight, you know the culture, you are adept in disguises and, after all, you _are_ a professional fencer. But if you find “spying”, as you say, so disgusting, I won’t even ask you. You’ll fail at the job and die in the process”. 

“Don’t _you_ find the whole business disgusting?”

“That’s my job, I got used to it”. 

“Job, you say? Well, pour me some of this occupational disease then. Is it from Arbor?”

“Dornish”.

“How can you drink this sour stuff?”

“You know nothing, good vine should be dry. Your taste is spoiled by locals, they like anything that’s sweet”. 

This talk about wine served for dawdling, and both men knew it. Kyrill Ivanovich had an aversion for becoming a spy, but neither did he wish to leave the planet, and for such a ridiculous reason too – some camera transmitted something odd… Such alarmists! 

“I have a man in the Red Keep, would you like to know him?” he offered. 

Alexey winced.

“Kyrill Ivanovich, my dear, if a westerosi knight drinks at your expense, it doesn’t make him ‘your man’. You didn’t take due-bills from him?” 

“Of course not!”

“And even if you did… There’s nothing to blackmail him with, he kills people only at the king’s orders or in drunken brawls, his sexual tastes are run-of-the-mill…”

“For shame, Alyosha!” 

“What’s so shameful? ‘Your man’, Kyrill Ivanovich, is someone you hold by the throat and may strangle any moment. And a boon companion will sell you for another drink, this can’t be serious. By the way, tell this so-called ‘your man’ he still owes me for that helmet”. 

Kirill Ivanovich shook his head. 

“You have a _Midas_ behind the curtain and you go penny-pinching. Hand me over some silver, by the way, about fifty coins, braavosi ones, if you please”. 

“I’m not penny-pinching,” Golovin said in a serious voice, “I’m keeping up my legend. A blacksmith can’t give helmets for free, that would be suspicious. And you shouldn’t throw your money around either, or one day you’ll find yourself in the black cells where you’d be most unpleasantly tortured. Sweet mister Baelish has an enormous interest in other people’s money. Are you going to work for me or not? If not, then no money for you”. 

“That’s blackmail”.

“No doubt of that. So – yes or no?” 

“Oh, go to hell! Yes!” 

 

* * *

 

Kyrill Ivanovich woke up because someone was scratching at his door. It was one of the locals’ wearisome traits – they didn’t know how to knock: either they were forcing the doors like robbers or standing on the threshold, breathing heavily. He rose from his bed, went to the door barefoot and unlatched the door. A snub-nosed boy was standing there, sniffing. He was holding a wooden bucket of water. 

“Good morning, boy,” Kyrill Ivanovich said politely. The boy sniffed, put the bucket on the floor, took the other one, full of slops, and also the lidded chamber-pot. His face wore a wary, rather squeamish expression. Squeamishness, as Kyrill Ivanovich knew, was not about the contents of the chamber-pot – that would be strange in the city where every wall was a public toilet – but about the lid: the boy didn’t understand the reason for it. 

The door closed after the boy’s visit, Kyrill Ivanovixh sighed, took a basin from under the bed and pulled his nightshirt over his head. The owner of the house where he was renting that room thought that the lodger was too liberal with water: a bucket a day, can you believe that?! Luckily in three years she hadn’t guessed that the old braavosi was washing the floor every day, or she’d turn him out of her house for making the house damp. She was displeased with him as that, for washing his own smallclothes instead of paying her half-penny a shirt, but here Kyrill Ivanovich was adamant: he had used the services of local washerwomen just once and that way found out why the populace of King’s Landing had such ragged look. 

Kyrill Ivanovich soaped his washcloth and tried to convince himself that bathing in cold water was actually pleasant in such hot weather. That was nothing he could do about it anyway: the house had an oven, but during the summer it was kept locked for fear of fires, and all the food was taken across the street, to be cooked at the baker’s. So there was no way of heating the water. If the mistress of the house or her lodgers suddenly decided to bathe (a rare occasion, truth be told) they used bathhouse around the corner. 

He bathed, dressed and went to buy some bread. Local bread, strange as it may seem, was rather good, especially when fresh. Kyrill Ivanovich avoided the thought about the hands that had kneaded the batter – he once had a misfortune to write down that the best way to take dirt from under your nails was to knead batter, and had tried to forget it ever since. His only consolation was the heat of the oven, certainly deadly for most bacteria. 

The boy who was messing around in the yard gave him a disapproving look – the lodger could’ve sent him to buy bread and paid half-penny for that. But the boy, who took out all chamber-pots in the house, never washed his hands, and Kyrill Ivanovich remained firm. 

He bought half-loaf of hot fragrant bread and, falling into temptation, a cherry tart. In his rooms, he chopped some cabbage and a carrot, added a grated apple, poured some olive oil from an earthenware cruet and broke his fast with delight. 

Eating raw vegetables was something else that earned him sideways glances in the house – everyone knew that was the cause of cholera. Unlike most of other local superstitions this one was even truthful, at least partly: market vegetables were never washed, and even if they were, the water from Blackwater was such that Kyrill Ivanovich disinfected it even for washing the floors and his underwear. 

Eating in King’s Landing was a tricky business, especially if you weren’t used to it. The fruit were mouth-watering, and vegetables not so bad, but the meat was salted and roasted to the point of making Kyrill Ivanovich desperate. Any tavern food was floating in grease, and it was a rare place where the grease wasn’t rancid. Milk was delivered in lidless buckets, and all sorts of unspeakable things used to fall in it along the way. But there were braziers and grates on the quay, where fresh fish was grilled, put into a piece of bread with a dash of raw onion, and sold for a pittance, and it was truly food of the gods. 

In the morning he had two pupils, both unpleasant. There had been a time when Kyrill Ivanovich hoped to work his way into the noble houses with his fencing skills, but that came to nothing: local knights fought with heavy swords, used one or two movements and mostly relied on their strength and stamina. Kyrill Ivanovich would show, a stick in his hands, the advantage one gained when using proper technique, but to no avail: the knights believed they were demonstrated some foreign trick, clever but cheating, and cheating was dishonorable. Another clientele, however, passed the braavosi teacher’s name around. Their fingers were bejeweled, their names were false, their faces were scarred, their eyes were deceitful. Sometimes Kyrill Ivanovich worried that those pupils of his were killing passers-by at nights using his fencing skills, and was thinking about giving up teaching altogether, but it was the only legend he had. 

After the lessons he went to the Street of Silk. Near the first house a fat wench in dishabille was scratching her leg voluptuously. Upon seeing a man she inclined forward to show off her heavy breasts and opened her mouth. Kyrill Ivanovich shook his head, the wench yawned and resumed her scratching. 

He found the man he needed in the fifth house. He was sitting with a girl on his lap. There was a glazed jug and a pewter cup in from of him on the table.. Kyrill Ivanovich sat at the table and asked for wine and cheese. The food in brothels was even worse than in taverns, but cheese was usually safe. 

“How did the man travel?” he asked. 

The man rasped that he buggered the North, Winterfell, Kingsroad, the new Hand, all the king’s man and Kyrill Ivanovich as well. The girl in his lap giggled. The man pondered a bit and pushed her to the floor. 

“Off with you, come back later,” he explained. 

The girl rose, put out her tongue at him and left wiggling her behind. 

Kyrill Ivanovich put a pill of casparamide under his tongue on the sly. Local wine was watery and sweetish, a soft drink rather than alcohol, which enabled the local noblemen to drink it from dawn to dusk, but the talk he had in mind required drinking three liters at least, and one needed medicine to handle that. 

The other man’s name was Sandor Clegane, he was a young, strong, huge, well-fed drone. He did no work – his job was “guard to the Prince”, and there was nothing to guard the Prince from – he read no books, he was idle and bored and because of that he brawled in taverns and philosophized that this world was full of shit. _You should go to the countryside_ , Kyrill Ivanovich thought from time to time, _mow, plough and chop some wood, that would take care of your philosophy._

He began drinking, pouring wine to Sandor’s cup, listening, nodding, agreeing, and at last Sandor deigned to tell about his journey to the North. 

“Direwolf?” Kyrill Ivanovich interrupted him. “It is a sort of…”

“Wolf”. Sandor showed the size of the wolf with his palm, it appeared that a direwolf was bigger than a Saint-Bernard’s dog. 

“This man believed all direwolves were dead”. 

“They are now. Only five… four… five left. Stark killed one”. 

The story about direwolves was murky and mostly disgusting. In the middle of it Kyrill Ivanovich realized his drinking companion had killed a child two weeks ago, and he wished he was back on Earth. To chase a nine-year-old girl in the forest for two days, with weapons! Savages, villains, rascals! He liked the task of getting into the Red Keep less and less. Still, he made a mental note that the queen, to all appearances, wished to get rid of the new Hand, and that she had won the first set. 

He also noticed that Sandor was overly annoyed by the prince’s bride. After the fifth utterance about what a stupid, naïve, hypocritical, arrogant, and above all stupid girl she was, Kyrill Ivanovich was almost sure. Yet something was bothering him. 

“How old the girl?” he asked. 

“Eleven”. 

Kyrill Ivanovoch felt he needed more casparamide. 

“How old is man?”

“Twenty-five, so what?” 

“Nothing. This man is sixty”. 

Taken out of folklore context, such peculiarities of westerosi romance always unsettled him. 

“This man wants to find more pupils,” he said. “This man thinks that the new Hand will hire him maybe”. 

Sandor took the jug and poured the remains of the wine into his mouth. 

“Why the fuck does he need you, he has only daughters with him”. 

Kyrill Ivanovich nearly said: “So what?” He was constantly amazed that the culture in which rape was one of five most common crimes didn’t teach its women self-defense. 

“The Hand wants a guard maybe. Direwolf is good, but direwolf is an animal, and this man was the First Sword to the Titan of Braavos.” 

Sandor banged the jug on the table to signify his desire for more wine. 

“Ned Stark doesn’t give two fucks about your Braavos. You may try, though”. 

“This man is poor, and Lord Stark is a great lord who lives in the Tower of the Hand. This man thought that if someone put a word in his favor…”

Sandor barked a raspy laugh. 

“Are you deaf or what? I told you a thousand times – I serve the Queen and the Prince. I take you to Ned Stark and tell him, look, I found you a guard, well, he just tells you to bugger off”. 

“This man didn’t ask to be taken to Lord Stark”. 

“So what do you want from me?” 

“If man like you goes to the gates of the Red Keep with his friend Syrio and says: “Guard, this man is my friend, let him in always”, it will be good. And then this man gives a coin to the guard and goes to find Lord Stark”. 

Sandor became thoughtful, probably deciding what to charge his friend Syrio. It obviously wasn’t money he was thinking of – he despised money, which didn’t stop him from drinking at other people’s expense. 

“Your water dance,” he said at last, “can you kill a man bigger than yourself?”

“This man can kill anyone. Height – no matter, strength – no matter, only skill matters”. 

“Can you teach me?” 

“This man is the best teacher in the Seven Kingdoms. But where had the man found someone bigger than himself?” 

“My brother,” Sandor said with a heavy grin. 

“The man wants to kill his brother?” 

“Why the fuck you care?” 

Kyrill Ivanovich poured himself more wine. 

 

* * *

 

Lord Eddard Stark, a short man with a long tired face, didn’t need a guard. He had his men, northerners, and he trusted them. Kyrill Ivanovich suggested beating one of these northerners with a stick to show his skills, but Lord Stark declined the offer politely. 

“Those water dances,” he said, giving Kyrill Ivanovich a close scrutiny, “do I understand correctly that you fight with small, light swords?” 

“My lord is right”. 

“Could you teach someone to wield such a sword?” 

_Do you want to kill your brother too?_ Kyrill Ivanovich thought amazedly. He said: 

“This man earns his bread by teaching to fence”. 

“Teach a child? A girl child?”

“Child, grown man, old man, woman, eunuch, - this man can teach anyone”. 

“My younger daughter was given such a sword as a present. I cannot take it away, because it is a present from someone she… cares about, but a weapon is not a toy. Don’t make a warrior of her, just show her how to handle the sword, so she doesn’t injure herself or someone else”. 

And Kyrill Ivanovich became a teacher to the nine-year-old Arya Stark. She was a wonderful girl: smart, persistent and fearless. Kyrill Ivanovich didn’t deny himself the pleasure of teaching her the way he himself had been taught, with the twist of catching cats and talking about the wonders of Braavos. But those lessons, pleasant as they were, were sadly useless to his main purpose – Lord Stark didn’t let his daughters into the state affairs. 

Teaching Clegane was, on the contrary, very disagreeable: he called all theory “rot”, despised warm-ups, and his ideas about accident prevention were murky at best. As soon as he took a sword or a stick with a leaden center, some unpleasant persistency would burn in his gaze; negligent and lax as he was, in those moments he would brace himself, become attentive, cautious, and, the worst of all, he would constantly try to hurt his teacher. There was something inhuman in it, as if he were a large dog, circling around you, baring its teeth and searching for the opportunity to rip your throat. As a source of information he was almost useless: his opinion that Ned Stark was a noble fool and that the queen was going to swallow him whole was worthless. Luckily, Clegane soon won a large local tourney, became vain and stopped the lessons. 

For all the local paranoia, for all the fact that the queen had her own men, the elder prince had his own guard and the king was constantly followed by two knights in white armor, taking shifts, for all the armed men any self-respecting lord had at the castle, for all the guards at the gates and all the secret passages in the castle (passages that, rumors had it, cost the lives to the people who built them to keep the secret), for all that, the Red Keep had no security to speak of. A couple of times armed people bothered Kyrill Ivanovich, asking about his business and his right to be at this place, but you could see they had no reason for it besides boredom, a wish to scare and a hope for a bribe. Only once Varys the eunuch, Master of Whisperers, effeminate, plump and powdered, met him in the passage and had a long talk about nothings: the beauty of Braavos, the long hours the Hand was working, the difficulties of finding a decent place to live in the city, and so on. 

You could enter the royal dinner as easy as any tavern if, of course, you were sitting “below the salt”, at the lower end of the table, next to the servants. The food, by local standards, was low-grade: roasted chickens, beef stew, pease pudding, boiled cabbage and salted fish, but there was a lot of it, you could have fed a couple of streets in the Flee Bottom with one great bowl. Plates and covers were not provided, the food was taken with bare hands and put on the hunks of stale bread (fresh bread was put only on the “high table”, to the royal family, yesterday’s bread was given to the honorable guests, and you could hammer nails with the bread at the lower table). Still, Kyrill Ivanovich was there not to eat but to watch and listen to the gossip. At the table they were saying that the Hand was never long from a brothel; that the queen didn’t let the king into her bedroom; that the king wanted a younger wife; that the Knight of Flowers and Renly Baratheon had shared a bed for three nights during the tourney, allegedly because there wasn’t enough space in the castle; that prince Joffrey had called two men with fighting-cocks to his room, and there he made the men themselves fight, almost to the death; that in Gulltown a cat had a two-headed kitten, and so on. All this, including the kitten, Kyrill Ivanovich would later retell to Golovin. 

Surprisingly enough, his first real piece of intelligence came from Arya Stark. To begin with the girl was lost and the northerners turned the castle upside-down in search for her. A few hours later she was found, and the next day she told Syrio about a strange conversation she had overheard in a cellar full of big scary sculls. “Told” doesn’t describe the torrent of broken words and gestures she ejected: when Arya was worried about something, she used to part with logic and coherence. 

“The girl must calm down and tell everything from the very beginning,” Kyrill Ivanovich said in an even voice. “Calm as water. All that the girl saw with her eyes and heard with her ears. One thing after the other”. 

He wasn’t feeling calm as water himself. “Found the bastard,” “tried to kill his son”, “the wolf and the lion”, some fat man from the Free Cities, some pregnant princess – princess Myrcella was ten years old, they couldn’t mean her, could they? – “khal”, Hand’s wife kidnapping Tyrion Lannister?!, literate birds… 

“And Father said it was just a mummers’ show!” Arya concluded angrily. 

_The question is – does he believe it a mummers’ show himself_ , Kyrill Ivanovich thought. The Hand couldn’t involve a nine-year girl into politics, of course, but he had had to listen to her words. Still, if Arya had told him about the conversation she had overheard in her usual manner – a hundred words a minute – Lord Stark had probably understood nothing. 

“The girl’s Father is right,” he said. “This is braavosi play called _The murder of Gonzago_. Those men, they want to change it to play in Seven Kingdoms, so they say the words and put the names of great lords and ladies instead of braavosi names. Let the girl repeat once more how she got out of the Red Keep”. 

The same evening he told the story to Golovin. 

“I know what princess they meant,” Alexey said in a disgruntled voice. “Daenerys, the daughter to the Mad King. The fat one, Illirio Mopatis, had married her to a Dothraki khal, now she is obviously pregnant, and after she gives birth, the khal will start a war to win back the Iron Throne for her. Would you like to live through a Mongol invasion in real time?” 

“I’d rather not”. 

“Doesn’t look like you have a choice. I wonder where they expect to get the ships. Our fools should be straightening the fleet, and Stannis just had to leave for Dragonstone…” 

“And the second man?” Kyrill Ivanovich asked. 

“The second? Ah, you mean in the cellar? Varys, I guess, where there’s Mopatis there’s Varys. The bastards want to restore the dynasty, I suppose. You see, I was right to send you there. But a Mongol invasion during a civil war is an awkward thing, evacuation plan is still on, would you like to go to Sothoros?” 

“And what about you?”

“What about me? That’s what I do, they never send progressors to the pleasant ages, do they? So, will you go?”

Kyrill Ivanovich thought about it and refused. 

“Your Mongol invasion must cause a surge of folklore, I wouldn’t want to miss that”. 

* * *

Now the big events went one after another: Stark’s wife had really taken Tyrion Lannister hostage, Stark resigned, met Jaime Lannister in town that same day, fought with him, had his leg broken, was unconscious and feverish for several days, then the king came to visit him, talked about something, blackened the queen’s eye in Stark’s presence (charming mores!) and reversed the resignation. The castle was buzzing with rumors and gossip. The war between the Starks and the Lannisters seemed imminent. Some were saying the Starks were going to win because the king was backing them, the others argued that the Lannisters were backed by the queen, which was much better, yet the others suggested that the queen could be replaced, and some, looking over their shoulders, whispered that the king wasn’t eternal either… 

Contrary to her custom, Arya came to her lesson crestfallen and thoughtful. Kyrill Ivanovich asked what the matter was. 

“I threw an orange at my sister,” she admitted. “I’ll get scolded now”. 

Kyrill Ivanovich had seen the sister in question once or twice. By the local standards she was a beautiful girl: plump, languid, with a round face and big empty blue eyes. To tell the truth, he also would like to throw an orange at her, if only to make her more lively: in his book, a normal child should run and laugh, not strut along the passages pretending to be a princess. 

“Why the girl did that?” 

“Because she is vile!” Arya exclaimed. “I said… and she said…” 

Kyrill Ivanovich lifted his hand. 

“Calm as water”. 

“Fierce as a wolverine!” Arya retorted.

“Did the girl ever see a wolverine throw an orange? A beast of prey never screams nor argues, it attacks and kills. Does the girl want to kill her sister?” 

Arya sniffled. 

“No, I guess”. 

“Then let the girl not do this again”. 

“I know. Because we are a pack, and when winter comes, the lone wolf dies but the pack lives”. 

In his mind, Kyrill Ivanovich called Lord Stark an idiot – a fine idea to fill the child’s head with, indeed! 

“No, for another reason. Because the girl must not be angry. In Braavos we say: ‘Angry person is always in the wrong’”. 

“But I was right!” Arya protested. 

“Ts-ts-ts!” Kyrill Ivanovich lifted his hand again. “Calm as water. Let the girl say who gets scolded more often – the girl or her sister?” 

“Me, of course”. 

“Let the girl say why”. 

“Because it’s unfair, that’s why!” 

“This man thinks that it is because the girl’s sister rarely throws oranges. Let the girl look and learn”. 

Kyrill Ivanovich never found out how the business with the orange was resolved. The next time Arya came hopping, happy and excited, and shouted right away: 

“Syrio, say you will go to the North with us!”

“The North?”

“We are sailing by ship, only it’s a secret, and Father said I can take you if you agree, please say that you agree!”

_The North_ , Kyrill Ivanovich thought, _the forklore of the First Men, legends about the Children of the Forest, tales, proverbs, songs, and if I manage to get behind the Wall… A whole new field of knowledge, when they get all that new material on the Earth, they’ll be beside themselves with joy…_

“This man will go with the girl”. 

Arya hopped with glee. 

_Stark sends his children sway, in a hurry, in secret,_ Kyrill Ivanovich thought. _Alyosha must be told first thing after the lesson._

But at the beginning of the lesson the doors were opened and a knight in white armor went in. Five soldiers with Lannister arms on their helmets stood behind him. 

“Arya Stark, come with us, child. Your father wants to see you,” the knight said. 

In his eight years on this planet Kyrill Ivanovich had seen murdered people, battered horses and crippled dogs; he had seen girls of thirteen married to men of threescore and ten, and had drunk to the happy couple; he had seen toddler beggars covered with sores; he had heard about women raped for fun and men killed for sport; he had seen death of hunger, drunkenness, dirt, ignorance and dumb cruelty. He believed he had come to regard all this with the indifference befitting a true scientist. But now, facing six armed men who came to arrest and possibly kill a girl on nine, he felt a hot gleeful fury. 

He had never killed people before – even progressors never did that, a man from the Earth could never fall so low as to kill. But a child was standing behind his back, a merry, assiduous, hot-tempered girl, and Kyrill Ivanovich suddenly realized that he didn’t care whether he killed those soldiers or not. 

_I have become a savage here_ , he thought as the arm of the first assailant broke with a crack. 

“Arya child,” he called out, not looking at her, “we are done with dancing for the day. Best you are going now. Run to your father”. 

“Swift as a dear”, whispered the girl. 

“Just so”. 

He killed five men, surprised by the easy of it. They were moving slowly, clumsily, they were not paying attention, and they were hindering each other and screaming. _The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of the superior does not relieve him of responsibility, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him,_ he was saying in his head. _A moral choice._

The knight swore, took out his sword and Kyrill Ivanovich knew he was never going to the North. 

_A pity_ , he thought, _no such occasion will present for a folklorist in a very long time._

“Arya child,” he said in an even voice, “be gone now”. 

* * *

Alexey Golovin to Oleg Malygin

As the head of the westerosi cell of progressors, I’m giving you an official order – stop playing the fool. From yesterday we have a full-blown civil war on our hands, the last thing I need is a progressor with religious mania. You must observe battles, robberies, tortures, executions – and yes, resurrections as well – with a cold head, otherwise you are useless here. They don’t teach specialists on the Earth to have them butchered in local feudal wars. 

There is a boy of sixteen going through the Riverlands, tall, black hair, blue eyes, answers to the name “Gendry Waters”, a distinctive mark – a helmet shaped like a bull’s-head. He is a bastard of the late king. Varys sent him to the Wall for some reason. If you get an opportunity, see that the boy is safe. 

Judging by the recent celestial effects we can safely assume that the ship with the civilians is on the orbit. Let’s consider it good news.


End file.
